[51] Jocrisse is the stock French type of the booby, and as such is a character in many comedies. He breaks a plate, for instance; his master asks him how he managed to be so clumsy, and he instantly smashes another, saying, “Just like that!” His master asks him to be sure and wake him early in the morning; Jocrisse answers: “Right, sir, depend on me; but of course you’ll ring!”—T.
[52] The Girondists (so called from Gironde, a district of Bordeaux) were the more sober republican party in the Assembly, who were forced by circumstances to join the Jacobins against Louis XVI. With their fall from power in the early summer of 1792 the last hope of the monarchy disappeared.—T.
[53] Referring to the horrible massacres of September, 1792, when about 1400 victims perished.—T.
[54] The French Dick Turpin. Of good education, he formed when quite a youth a band of robbers, and became the terror of France. Like Turpin, he is the subject of dramas and stories.—T.
[55] A forest near Paris, on the line to Avricourt. It was a famous haunt of brigands. There is a well-known story of a dog which attacked and killed the murderer of its master there.—T.
[56] Literally “cut-top”: we have no equivalent in English.—T.
[57] A five-act comedy by Victorien Sardou.
[58] The nickname given to the Jacobins, the extreme revolutionists, who sat on the highest seats on the left in the National Assembly.—T.
[59] Which were the strict preserves of the aristocrats: to fish in them was as great a crime as to shoot a landlord’s rabbit was, a few years ago, in England.—T.